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End-of-Life Dreams

commonwealmagazine.org

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Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#131

Post by tapanjk »

jacooper wrote: post #78

Beautiful article, almost burst into tears reading it. Even as a relatively young person, articles about death are scary, sad and peaceful, it's such a weird mix of emotions. > there is one finding of Kerr’s research that is somewhat surprising. Almost none of his patients had a dream or vision that was explicitly religious. I found this to be interesting, isn't one of the main pillars of religion the afterlife? I th…

> Even as a relatively young person, articles about death are scary, sad and peaceful, it's such a weird mix of emotions.

Articles about death are scary because you are a young person. Most older people report that they are comfortable talking and/or contemplating about death.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#132

Post by mejutoco »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #113
mejutoco wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Give it 150 more years and all the current "mysteries" will appear more or less ridiculous. My bet is in 150 years we will have even more questions, and maybe one or two solved ones. Let’s look at history. If you were blind 500 years ago there was no cure. If you are blind now, while the life conditions might be better (guide dog, support from organizations) there is still no cure. We really do not know much. Scien…

There is no cure for blindness? What kind of blindness? Even a popular entertainer made news when curing 1,000 cataracts with a today's standard procedure. How would cataracts be cured 500 years ago? Bloodletting? Very soon (10 years, 20, maybe more) we will be able to restore full eyesight, even regrow eyes [1], and beyond. But sure, cling to dusty metaphysics while sending messages at light speed across the entire…

> But sure, cling to dusty metaphysics while sending messages at light speed.

I do not understand what you mean by dusty metaphysics. I am guessing you mean religion? I can criticize science without endorsing religion. It is not either or. If that is the case, I believe you read into my comment things I did not say.

I already said science is great. At the same time, we hardly know anything. These are orthogonal. We are a bunch of apes on a rock in the middle of space.

Replacing religion with science is what (one of the things) Nietzsche was talking about. What a better example, ironically, that not being able to criticize Science.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#133

Post by clnq »

yes_man wrote: post #121
clnq wrote: post #33

Whatever is happening, it is sad to hear about yet another case where doctors are too arrogant to listen to their patients and try to understand. It might not be a spiritual experience, it might be delirium. But perhaps it is important step in the human mind making peace with death. And it disappoints me greatly that the medical community shuns this phenomenon and anyone who tries to research it. There is nothing wor…

In defense of doctors, they are ideally supposed to practice based on evidence. That is the whole point of Western medicine in good and bad. As a physician you might see people in your work that report these dreams and take it as a data point if it is very common. But what about people who see such dreams that don’t report them, or who aren’t even sick and it was just a dream, and most of all, who are sick and see su…

I disagree that a good doctor needs to be skeptical of everything until they properly gathered evidence. That is more a description of what a rigorous scientist should do.

There is a school of thought in medicine among some doctors (at least in Central and Northern Europe) that many patients know what’s wrong with them and one can go a long way toward a diagnosis by listening to and trusting a patient. Tests are used to confirm the diagnosis if possible, but they are well-known to be less reliable than the patients’ own experience (pains and other symptoms, for example). As an ex-medic myself, I strongly believe this is a more correct way to practice medicine, at least until significant advances are made in testing.

That is not to say that we don’t have highly accurate tests that will clearly indicate conditions (blood tests for IgGs, IgMs, BG, CRP, organ function, BP, ECGs, etc). But many conditions won’t show up reliably in common examinations and tests.

One of my old and wise doctor colleagues from a long time ago used to say that we live in the Stone Age of medicine — most of our tests and exams have very low specificity and we must treat a lot of people by what they tell us and our own subjective experience. He used to say that future doctors will see us as benevolent cave men who were constantly failed by our tools, unable to effectively remove illness and suffering, only really able to effectively listen and try to help, sometimes by just trying therapies until something hopefully sticks. I agree with them.

There is nothing worse than a distrusting doctor who dismisses the patients symptoms to instead blindly and arrogantly applies a schematic based on assumptions that our testing and examinations have very good specificity. That is just not the case for most diseases and violates the benevolence principle considered intrinsic in medicine by many. In my opinion, this is only acceptable for new doctors (like those still in training and under supervision). Otherwise, this behaviour is just malicious.

The science of medicine is very different from practicing medicine. The consequences of malpractice are deadly, and the time to treat a patient correctly is often limited. Scientists work in a much less constrained environment. Applying rigorous scientific method has relatively few negative externalities.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#134

Post by joveian »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #60
ekianjo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it disappoints me greatly that the medical community shuns this phenomenon The medical community is a joke as a whole. They even brush off side effects because they have never heard about them before. They are as unscientific as you can go. Nowhere in hard science world do people act like that.

> The medical community is a joke as a whole. They even brush off side effects because they have never heard about them before. They are as unscientific as you can go. I've had lackluster medical care before, but this is an extreme position. A lot of health professionals are dealing with life and death decisions on an hourly basis. I can understand how under those circumstances you'd be biased towards conservative an…

The complaint isn't about any particular treatment but rather about a lack of basic respect for patients. I once had a doctor tell me I was lying because studies show that only 10% of patients had that side effect. There are systems that are supposed to help find previously unnoticed side effects but I wonder how many doctors are actually using them when some have such strong reactions to known and not even that uncommon side effects. Of course, patients can also incorectly attribute something to a medication and doctors need to take that into account as well but repeated challenge gives a better idea. Some particularly strong effects, like that prompted the doctor's comment in my case, are rather obvious when they being shortly after starting the medication and stop shortly after the medication stops. Patients need to be ready to decline treatment if doctors aren't listening or there can be major, even deadly, results.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#136

Post by andyjohnson0 »

The theme of crossing a river, mentioned repeatedly in the article, and occurring in various religions and belief systems, reminds me of Jung's concept of the archetype - a universal pattern emerging out of what he called "the collective subconscious". Some brief searches indicate that Jungian psychologists seem to have studied the dreams of dying people.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#137

Post by lynx23 »

wishfish wrote: post #10

When my father died, he had a waking dream of this. Saw a river with all his dead family across the water. Smiling and waving. Coming to the banks. Waiting for him to cross. His last words were “Cover me in a blanket of sunshine.” He died two hours later. What’s a little remarkable to me is that he had these visions in this detail despite being lifelong blind. As I was reading the article, I kept wondering which came…

My eyesight started to deteriorate around the age of 7, and went completely away roughly 5 years later. I was always a rather visual person, but still kept my ability to visualize complex scenery roughly only for about 5 years. At the age of 20, every face I might have remembered was totally gone, nor was I able to crisply imagine things I used to know how they looked.

I don't really want to muddy your memory of your father, but I highly doubt he really saw the vision he described in the detail that you imagine. More likely is that he found a way to translate his inner state in such a way that a sighted person like you could understand it. There are always exceptions of course, and I dont know what "lifelong blind" really mean. But if it means what I think, I doubt that the ability to visualize complex scenery suddenly reformed itself just for that occasion.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#138

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

mejutoco wrote: post #132
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no cure for blindness? What kind of blindness? Even a popular entertainer made news when curing 1,000 cataracts with a today's standard procedure. How would cataracts be cured 500 years ago? Bloodletting? Very soon (10 years, 20, maybe more) we will be able to restore full eyesight, even regrow eyes [1], and beyond. But sure, cling to dusty metaphysics while sending messages at light speed across the entire…

> But sure, cling to dusty metaphysics while sending messages at light speed. I do not understand what you mean by dusty metaphysics. I am guessing you mean religion? I can criticize science without endorsing religion. It is not either or. If that is the case, I believe you read into my comment things I did not say. I already said science is great. At the same time, we hardly know anything. These are orthogonal. We a…

In a funny way, by dusty metaphysics I actually meant the great Swiss philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

In Genealogy of Morals he has quotes such as "Science is not nearly independent…, in every respect it first needs a value-ideal, value-creating power, in whose service it can believe in itself,—science itself never creates values." [1] using the word wissenschaft for science, knowledge-making, translating literally the German word. The point was that we are already beyond any dreams Nietzsche could have imagined, the dichotomy religion/science was merely a cultural artefact of the Enlightenment. Hence the replacement you mention is not even an issue.

As for "hardly knowing anything", just looking at the front page of HN right now: we are discovering new water sources on the Moon [2], new primitive cells [3]. We are improving, however knowledge is not about totality (omni-scientia, as the religious terminology would put it). Even if we were to condense all the knowledge in one place, hoard it, it would only collapse into a black hole, our universe is rather limited. Knowledge is about principles: we will never again have to worry about the sun not rising tomorrow because we made the god of Sun angry (although we should worry that the Sun will evaporate Earth in a few billion years, so I suppose Nietzsche has his point [4]).

[1] Two Genealogies of Human Values: Nietzsche Versus Edward O. Wilson on the Consilience of Philosophy, Science and Technology, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6978441

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35565553

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35537248

[4] 'Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.', 1873, F. Nietzsche, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#139

Post by andrepd »

jgilias wrote: post #108
rmason wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My late father had a dream where he said his brother had appeared before him beckoning him to come with him. He said I told him that I needed more time and he nodded. A few days later with all his relatives around him who flew in from all over the country we had an amazing day and he was in really good spirits. The nurses finally told us that evening we had to leave for the day so he could sleep. I was the last to le…

My late grandmother used to see dreams of passed away relatives long before she died, as in decades. She told that she enjoyed having a good chat with them, and that the important part is to politely decline if they want you to follow them for whatever reason, as that would mean passing away. To her all of this was just common sense. Crazy to see it validated in actual research! Thanks for sharing your beautiful stor…

> Crazy to see it validated in actual research!

Well a handful of anecdotes aren't "actual research". Not knocking it off per se, but yes, further research is needed.

Also, I couldn't find a link to the empirical work alluded in the piece.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#140

Post by joveian »

dusted wrote: post #105

I find it very interesting. I don't doubt these experiences take place. I wonder (and suspect) if they influenced by the cultural upbringing and beliefs of the dying subjects. What I find even more interesting is causation: * Do these experiences arise from the brain somehow "determining/observing/knowing that the body can no longer be sustained and is indeed about to die ? What seems to talk against that, is that pa…

Since they are so common I would guess that it is more a physiological response. Many medications cause vivid dreams so it wouldn't be surprising that something that commonly happens near death has a similar effect. It could be that even the people who don't report it happening are often just not able to remember it happening. I agree there is a difference in how willing different people greet death and that it has some effects but I would guess it more likely relates to how likely someone is to get into the situation where the dreaming happens. I think there is more acceptence of older people accepting death; personally I would say there is danger in overemphasising either willing death or extreme avoidance of death.

One thing that has interested me is the practice of some Buddhist monks of predicting (potentially even to some extent causing) their own death. Long term meditation can increase voluntary control of the autonomic system and I'm guessing something similar happens in willing vs. unwilling death; willingness to die may signal to the autonomic system not to make some types of corrections that could potentially be made.

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